The Unicorn's Daughter
by Occurs
Summary: A sleeping beauty with a stained past and the unheading prince who awakens her. Rated R due to mature themes, not graphic content.


Untitled 

Title: The Unicorn's Daughter  
Author: Occurs (missoccurs@fangirl.org)  
Material: Fairy Tale   
Rating: R  
Notes: This is rated R for theme, not for any vulgarities or graphicness. I just thought it needed the rating. I may, however be reading to much into my own work. Please enjoy this original fairy tale, and review!   
  
  
Silver roses tumbled into the sleeping infant's crib, gently falling around her soft down of white hair and fragile pink skin wrapped in snow white cloth. Out of the darkness three voices trilled:  
  
"Weep for the roses, bastard child,  
Though now you sleep you'll be reviled  
You'll regret 'till you die the day you were born....  
Unicorn, Unicorn, U-ni-corn!"  
  
"Unicorn, unicorn...." The childish taunt rose the prince from sleep, his body chilled and sweating. Wiping his dusky eyes he climbed out of the twisted sheets and stood, his breath coming in ragged gasps. For sixteen years, his entire life as he could remember it, he had been having dreams of the Unicorn child, the half-human vision who was cursed and locked. She had grown as he had, his mind always showing her lying in the chill of death even as she blossomed into womanhood, his mind always full of the echoes of the harpiesh chants that accompanied the angelic visions. Stumbling he made his way to the window, staring out into the clear night of the kingdom. He could not wait another day without knowing....another dream without proving...With a heavy mind he went back to his silken bed, knowing he had said this many a time without resulting knowledge or proof.  
  
Still she slept.  
  
Sixteen years was a long time to wait without solution for such a pressing concern. The young Highness left the next morning, his eyes bright and gait assured. He was not seen off. The king would not even comment on his heir's strange task to find a unicorn in human flesh. The monarch kept an oppressive silence and watched from the yard as the boy departed.  
  
The road for the prince was a long path made short by a light heart. He ignored the daisy-covered fields, the green and tempting woods, even the crystal brilliant snow as he continued steadfastly north. His mind could only focus on the culmination of so many years of confused fantasy: the claiming of his unicorn-woman. For surely, he reasoned, the gods meant her to be mine. No great hero is left unrewarded. For the prince did indeed consider himself a great hero, despite his lack of notable accomplishments. Ah, what noble pride and heart! It was this pride that was dually paid when he lay eyes on the ivory tower that held his unicorn. Swiftly he dismounted and placed his hand on the gilded door. Deep in his soul he could hear the dream voices...  
  
"You seek someone cursed by fate,  
Only source of divine hate,  
Misfortune will come to you and yours  
If you awaken that unicorn!"  
  
The hellish caw sent a chill down to his very soul, a curse that his heavy armor could not prevent. But the memory of a dreamt of angel, with pale skin and hair like the snow he had passed on his quest, drove him forward. He began to climb the long cold spiral of stairs, the sound of his footfalls shaking the dust that had lay dormant for sixteen turns. He could still hear the curses, the taunting, the unbearable chorus that struggled to halt his progress.   
  
"Stop this madness, gentle prince,  
We mean no harm, we must convince  
We'll be the last, the ones to mourn,  
When you fall to your unicorn!"  
  
The last syllables seemed to fall away as he wearily pushed open the door that was at the top of the tower, a barrier of cold, harsh iron that bit at his hand as he moved it. The small pain was forgotten as he looked over the desolate space to the room's one decoration. Lying beneath a small and tattered sheath on a pile of dark and splintered ashwood was his prize. Her hair was unbound and fell around her in a cloaking tangle, her skin had the cold mark of death. The prince's pulse quickened at the sight of her. He walked over and embraced the maiden body, giving her the seed of his own life. He noticed not how the wound on his palm stained crimson the remnant of her infant's linen.  
  
It was days before the prince had regained his mind enough to think of leaving, days more before he regained the initiative to do so. He was drunk on her beauty, her naiveté, her utter submergence of will. How, he wondered as he lead her down the stairs that had once again regained their coating of dust, could a man desire anything but this? As she regarded him with eyes as wide and eternal as a doe's he could feel the rush of hunger and love that came from simply being in the unicorn's presence. With infinite care he grasped her tiny hand, leading her into her first contact with the world of soil and light.  
Perhaps it was his own submerged doubts that framed the chorus that still lingered.  
  
"Oh prince she is yours true and fast,  
But to never discover the truth of her past  
Will be your doom some future morn  
For the claiming of this unicorn!"  
  
The pair were given a royal reception, and a royal wedding followed. They were the toast of the kingdom, the strapping example of perfect princedom and his blushing bride, surely, the people whispered, some fairy princess stolen from the snow queen's side. Only the king refused to take part in the celebration. He retired to his room, giving the unicorn only the most cursory of pained glances before leaving. There was almost an exhalation of apology as he passed the prince, but it couldn't have been other than a fancy taken by minds already focused on only pleasure.   
  
The royal carriage promptly arrived amidst the pomp to escort the couple to blissful union. Roses, red and pink and the white of the unicorn's mane, were strewn in their path as the carriage started off, and then abruptly stopped with a sound of terrible pain. There were hushed gasps as the prince stepped out of his private conveyance, annoyed that something sought already to mar his happy state. His eyes widened and then filled with clear waters as he saw what had brought them to a halt. Lying in a pool of fresh scarlet was a lump of brown and gray. It was form the prince knew well; the now inanimate thing was a favorite hunting dog of his. She had been as fierce as a wolf on the trail and as gentle as a lamb in the cold castle. His heart ached as he was ushered back into the carriage, pushed forcibly over the roses that had changed to brown and red. He could not even bring himself to look at his bride; but with gentle touch and mild words she soon raised his spirits. If he had his unicorn, he reasoned as she gently stroked his hair, what could any lesser creature matter? Even these thoughts were lost in favor of ones more suiting a new groom as the carriage rattled and bounced toward the nuptial cottage.  
  
The way home was if anything more uneasy than the way up had been. The unicorn seemed unconcerned as always, staring placidly out the window with her strange, inhuman eyes. The prince's mind, however, was troubled. He had been plagued by the harpies again, those sure soul-sisters to the witches of fate, those who seemed to be forever entitled to haunt his waking moments and destroy what he yearned for. Even now their unison filled his thoughts.  
  
"Most gracious son of lord of all  
Do not return, lest kingdom fall  
You'll be someone the gods abhor  
If you bring back that unicorn!"   
  
But, as always, his wife's slightest glance or smile could banish these thoughts and make his mind easy again. It was a hard way to live, in constant turmoil against inner self, but he would do it for her. His inner resolve increased with every repetition of the don'ts and curses. He would not abandon his heavenly charge.   
  
He was to be sorely tested. The prince and his princess had been back for a fortnight when the younger son of the monarchy, barely thirteen and growing to be as damningly handsome and noble as the dauphin, was found at the bottom of a castle trellis, his body limp and broken, white and pink rose-petals scattered around his body with their broken stems now clasped in death's hands. The prince's outcry and sorrow over his brother's death were genuine, and the kingdom was plunged into grief with his mourning. An answer was demanded, a witness procured. The gardener, rough man though he was, gave statement that the boy was only trying to fetch some roses for the gentlewoman with the far-away  
eyes. His princess thus implicated, the prince was forced to forget the pain that had befallen, lest someone think he blamed his beloved. And though the king turned on her a vengeful and watchful eye, the prince soon became oblivious to all but his wife's sweet skin and delicate scent.   
  
~ ~   
  
The years passed, as they have a way of doing, and the kingdom managed to slip from prosperity to middling in their span. The prince's indifference to matters of court and the king's growing age and infirmary forced the forgoing of many profitable ventures, and border skirmishes that would have been avoided in more attentive times. Time robbed the prince as well. The gold fell from his hair, the eyes lost their bright obsidian shine, his firm body grew slack with inactivity. But minutes never reached the unicorn, her long hair as lustrous as the day he had claimed her, her only half-human eyes as ancient  
and enchanting as when he had seen them open for the first time. And the people whispered again about the fairy, this time their voices clouded with accusations of black magic and bad blood. None, however, could say this to the unicorn herself, or to the prince who loved her. These words instead fell to his majesty the king, whose mind would not fail him even as wrinkled hands and breathless voice has ceased to be effective.   
  
It distressed him beyond comprehension, this confirmation of inequity brought to his doorstep. It pained him more to see what had become of his kingdom, and, more so than even that, what had become of his son. He had resolved never to bring up what had made him reject the unicorn to his now-only child, never spoken of the common blood that ran in the veins, yes, now it must be said, of the trio. His heavy head bowed as he listened closely, for the voices that haunted his eldest boy had cried to him for all of sixty years.  
  
"You let the bastard daughter in  
Let your baby pay the price of sin  
Let you kingdom fall for pride adored  
And carnal sin with a unicorn."  
  
He pleaded with the conscience to stop, cease, let him have peace in his twilight. But the sisters persisted, chanting with remorseful glee and wringing a fall of hot tears from the old blue eyes. To draw final breath in peace, to escape the blame for his youthful indiscretions and the sour fruit of his own tender quest...ah, a star that would forever be unreached! For as the proud man shuddered, his silver hair shining with a nervous sweat, he could hear a bell of death.   
  
"The sins of one, on one, bringing one.  
And from one one and joined to one  
And now you face yourself, and scorn.  
Your world will be left to a unicorn."  
  
And the crying man let a final tremor pass through him as his soul leapt up for a destination we cannot judge. And the soul of his son soon passed as well, and the souls of the townsfolk and their children unto the hundredth generation. And as moment upon moment passed the legends began, of a cursed kingdom in the charge of a fairy who had slept for a generation and ruled the dead for a god's lifetime. And her story was lost and found again, and her kingdom lost and found again, and the unicorn still sat impassively on her throne, awaiting the day when her life would end and she would cease to see the world with an animal's eyes. And in her beauty she was like a statue, and eventually the unicorn slept again, the voices leaving her in a state of deathlike slumber and those who heard of her history trying to find the keys to this fabled empire. And her story ends, as all good stories do.  
  
"Once upon a time..."  
  
~end  



End file.
